I can say the 80mm Noctua Fan ( NF-R8 ) seems like a safe investment. It's very high quality and the best 80mm fan I've had. Installed it in my Xbox and it works great, inaudible, nice static pressure, it's all good Three things surprised me with this fan. The first thing I noticed was the colors, was expecting computer beige and wine red but got makeup and milk chocolate The second thing is that it can be used as a fridge magnet! I actually put it on the fridge and it stuck The third surprise is the incredibly low vibration, maybe I got an extremely well balanced one, but I won't hesitate to try more of these for hard mounting. Seems the overly powerful magnet has a good use afterall This is the least vibrating 80mm fan I've tested - magnificent There's no mechanical or electrical noise and there's no whine at any speed, very pleasant to work with. However this fan has less whoosh-noise and more propeller-noise than any other 80mm fan I've tested if run fast, the noise character becomes more like a 120mm than an 80mm at higher speeds. Anyway, this fan is very easy to make inaudible.
The only catch is the colors which won't match any case, one would think at least standard black would be available by now Well, that and the price of course, the Xbox just needs one so that's OK, but if you need like five these ugly things get costly, however to their defence these fans will last a long time and they got 6 years warranty.

Hi,
Is there a mistake in recommended fans article with the SPL @ full speed for the 92mm Noiseblocker Black Silent Fan XE1? It's written 21 dBA@1m and in the roundup 28 dBA@1m. Or did I miss something?
Oops! My mistake.Sorry

I am currently trying a new Sharkoon Silent Eagle 120mm fan, it seems quiet and robust. It is being used as a replacement for the previous SilentX fans we had installed.

Although I was quite enthusiastic about the SilentX fans when I first found them, installing both 92mm and 120mm versions. They seemed extremely quiet performed their cooling job without a complaint and as they were used in a corporate environment were reassuringly expensive.

However 1 year on and that opinion has dramatically changed, probably 80% of the fans have failed to date, mainly the 92mm ones, but a 120mm 6 month old fan failed this week and enough is enough.

It seems that the fans biggest problem is the tolerance of the fan blades distance to the main surround, as all the fans have burn't out because they started rubbing after a time (why they developed this fault I don't know) and the result was a burn't out motor.

It may be due to the slightly flimsy nature of the fan, they seem very flexible and liable to deformation, a tiny diagonal distortion will cause the geometry of the fan to change enough to cause rubbing. It may also be down to the bearing. Either way they fail in a way I have never seen any other fan fail, the Sharkoon Silent Eagle fans appear far more rigid and therefore hopefully won't suffer from this issue.

All I can say is thank god for thermal cut off and sorry to all the people I recommended SilentX fans to.

First of all, thanks for a great site and thorough reviews. You've explained a lot of the harder stuff for me, and helped me in my struggles for a quiet rig. You review little but with immaculate precision, and even though your shortlists are short, they are to the point.

My NF-S12-800 dominates the fan soundscape in my case over a CNPS7000B-AlCu with default fan, a VF-900Cu and a BlackSilent XL1 Rev.2. The first is a 92mm Zalman CPU cooler, second is a retrofit 80mm Zalman GPU cooler and the last is a NoiseBlocker 120mm fan, all run at 5V via Akasa's Fan Control Pro. The sound it makes is not intrusive -- very flat and smooth in fact -- but it is very audible and raises the overall sound levels to less-than-desirable. Also, whenever I reach down to it, there's a little whine from the motor.

Only thing that drowns out the sound the Noctua makes are my three Seagates resonating in unison... Sonata II needed better grommets. That soon gets reversed with more revs though, because that's when the real turbine action starts.

I haven't had cooling efficiency problems with the NF-S12-800, but it does need to be cranked up for the exhaust to work under load, to near-full power in fact. Pressure problems, as you stated? Left at 5V the PSU ramps up, CPU heats up and eventually the graphics card overheats. I've resorted to removing the cover plate below the card to give it a good intake, but still the exhaust jars.

The Noiseblocker Blacksilent XL1 Rev.2 on the other hand gets a fair breeze across the packed HDD bay(3 drives), highest is the bottom drive which topped out at 53'C under load(SMART "worst" reading), and it cools the cards and chipset(passive Zalman sink) well enough.

It's in a Sonata II with said other fans and the default SmartPower 2x80mm 450W PSU, and I am disappointed with it. For 20â‚¬ I expected more than a soldered resistor and a sales speech.

--

On a brighter note I really like the Blacksilent Rev.2s -- why aren't they on your 120mm recommended list? Maybe you haven't had the chance to test them, but the "entire range" is listed in Calling All Good Fans, so there is yet hope?

I'm surprised you say the Noctua 800 fan dominates your soundscape. I wonder if vibration conduction is causing the sound to be more tonal than we've heard. Also whether the fan is damaged or out of spec. Do you have more than one of these? If so, some careful listening comparisons might be in order. Finally, if it doens't work for you.... well, replacing it with something else that does is obviously an option.

I have to admit, our confidence in our original assessment of the Noctuas is shakier than in any other fan we've reviewed.

Sorry for failing to mention that both case fans are decoupled with Coolink studs(blue) and the PSU has a retrofit silicone grommet from Antec. This has gotten rid of all the resonance I had before, especially with Noiseblocker SX2 PROs, incidentally also in the 20â‚¬ price range of the Noctuas.

When using the "ULNA" adapter though, which is the aforementioned soldered resistor, the fan is truly inaudible. But without it, and at 5V, it's either the fins or the airflow that deliver a blanket sound, like a draft. I'm thinking the motor whine suggests a bad sample, or just damage, but I'm keeping it as long as it works and the whine doesn't get worse. I don't have more of the Noctua fans yet as they are quite expensive, but I'll consider replacing it with another XL1(9â‚¬) -- so far I've tried every fan in the Blacksilent range(80, 92 and 120 mm), and been happy with the Rev. 2s. Original versions had rougher operating sound.

Allow me to point out that I wrote "dominates the fan soundscape", not the whole soundscape. The Seagates have that to themselves, making a horrible, horrible noise... and they'll make way for a WD RE2(games, data) and its SE16(OS, pagefile) buddy soon, as Hitachi is too expensive here.

I've been hearing mixed reports about Noctuas myself, and apparently have added to the confusion; but the 800 is, with its own adapter, a truly silent fan -- bar the motor whine. In the "plugged" state though it can't be adjusted freely anymore, and is much less versatile than the XL1.

I just bought two NF-S12-800's and I can attest to them being a long way from the quietest fans I've owned. To be honest, of the "quiet" fans I've owned they're amongst the most obnoxious.

They're exhibiting a tonal chafing sound, and volume of which appears to be orientation dependent. If I was looking for two downward blowing fans in my case I'd be happy, as it is I want to mount them vertically and they're really not very impressive in that orientation.

I believe that the Noctua fans are the product of computer modeling. First, you define the desired objectives. Then, you use computer modeling to refine blade design - width, pitch, etc to work best with the stated objectives. This sort of program can easily be run on today's personal PCs, which have floating point performance that could only be dreamed of in the days of the legendary "supercomputers", as well as vastly more memory.

What you wind up with is a fan that will meet the specified objectives very well. The problem is, the specified objectives may not fit real-world conditions.

Think optimizing auto engines, and face a buying public that counts cup-holders.

Is there a possibility of the Sharkoon Silent Eagle fans getting tested here at SPCR? Preferably the 2 120mm's and the 92mm ones! Would be really interesting to see a comparison between the 92mm's of Sharkoon and Nexus

Several people have already asked for that review, and for a real comparison between the Sharkoon 1000/120 and the top contenders (Nexus, Noctua...) in real conditions (inside a case, not in open air). It seems that SPCR has some trouble getting samples from a Sharkoon representative. Let's hope Sharkoon will finally listen !

I just bought two NF-S12-800's and I can attest to them being a long way from the quietest fans I've owned. To be honest, of the "quiet" fans I've owned they're amongst the most obnoxious.

They're exhibiting a tonal chafing sound, and volume of which appears to be orientation dependent. If I was looking for two downward blowing fans in my case I'd be happy, as it is I want to mount them vertically and they're really not very impressive in that orientation.

I've just bought 3 Noctua NF-S12-800 fans (11$) but all of them seems to be pretty good, i don't have any obstructing clicking chafting sound. Compared to my Nexus fans these are way better, lower resonance and RPM with the same airflow.

Maybe you should try an Enermax Enlobal UC-8AEBS WARP fan, this fan is not orientation dependant, lowest resonance with very good motor (magnetic barometric design), only disadvantage is the high stock RPM.
If you want to clean the rotor, because of the design you can detach the blades from the stator.

I have a few of the high speed Noctua fans (S12-1200) and I think they are extremely quiet at low voltage. Quieter than my S-Flex when both are at 5 volts. Lots of airflow on the Noctua too. I did a little test where I stuck a 20x20 3M Filtrete furnace filter (the good kind rated at "1250") on the side of a box, and this Noctua on the other side, to see how well it pulled air under some pressure. It did quite well, only very slightly worse than the S-Flex in this situation. This was a completely seat-of-the-pants test, I don't have a CFM meter unfortunately.

One thing to watch out for: use resistive/analog speed controls only. When I hook up my fans to my motherboard headers, there is a distinct hum from the fan motor whenever the header is set to anything less than the full 12V. I suspect this is due to a low frequency switching voltage regulation on these headers. If I use a regular resistor to take the fan down to the same voltage, no noise at all.

For the same reason, probably your choice of power supply is important as well. I use a Corsair 620hx, an absolutely wonderful PS (thanks for the brilliant recommendation, SPCR!)

Agree on low voltage. I RMA'd my 800 and asked for a 1200 in its place, got it too. They were both very quiet at 5V using my Akasa Fan Control Pro(just knobs, so as analog as you get I guess), no contest. The trouble began at full blast when gaming.

The 800 was apparently a faulty unit, but the 1200 had a noise character issue too: an audible whine at full RPM. I remembered the pressure issue, and after some airflow testing I found out it would whine if the intake was too restricted, as it is in a/my Sonata II by default. I removed the top 5.25" bay cover and voilÃ¡: whine was there with door closed but gone when door was opened, even just a little. I then proceeded to finding the proper revs where the fan wouldn't try too hard and end up whining, finally discovering the perfect balance at 1200 RPM, incidentally the same reading Noctua give on their site for the fan.

So, live and learn: my controller seems to have been feeding over 12V to the fans, although it was supposed to go to 12V +/- 5% max according to its specs. I rechecked all RPM readings and found many of them to be over the manufacturer specs or able to run the same RPM at lower voltages.

Heartily recommend Noctua now, although I just ordered a Blacksilent XL2 for the exhaust, just because I like them more(cheaper, more flow, no pressure issues, established lineup, good site and info). Swapping my SmartPower 2.0 450 for an S12-II 430 as well. Damn thing keeps crashing in the summer and needs that bay cover off to work.

i found this site extremely helpful and thank you all for doing this grate job.
the only thing i did not found here is 100mm fans that i'm gonna add to side panel of the case in order to cool my HDs (and the 15,000rpm scsi really need it). For this, i ordered two Scythe "KAZE-JYU" 100mm Silent and Powerful
my personal opinion is more fans @ low rpm will do the job.
now need to wait for UPS man with the package, make holes in the case (hard work to do) btw, any suggestions how to do this holes ?
form and size ? to cut one big or drill a lot of small ?

How about a recommended AC fan page? We recently bought an entertainment center for our living room, and now the HTPC and the 4 drive mass storage case are running hotter than they used to.

I'd like to modify the entertainment center with one or two fans on the back panel to help remove the hot air from each shelf. It would be great to make these as quiet as possible as well, but these need to run on 110VAC.

Hi, I am running a setup using the Silverstone LC17 - it comes with 2 Silverstone-branded 80mm exhaust fans.

Now, I was looking for alternatives to make them quieter, and from this fan roundup I chose the Nexus Real Silent Case Fan SP802512L.

For some reason though, I cannot reproduce the encouraging findings of SPCR: the fans are NOT QUIET, especially at full speed - it's like a jet take off at a low pitch. I am not sure if this is a new batch or what is causing this but they just seem quite ineffective and come at a high noise level.

I was running the Silverstones (2000RPM at 12V) at 1000RPMs or 6V and they were basically inaudible with Core i3-530 temperatures around 48 Celsius at full load. With the new fans at 1000RPMs (they're 1500 at 12V) they run LOUDER and the temps are around 52 Celsius.

I basically wasted money on this purchase that I thought would be well thought-through - could you please take another look at your fan roundup?

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